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and faith undergo a radical change, in that they are converted
to secular ends. Thus one might venture the speculation that hia
worldly-esthetic idea of an elite is in some way associated, however
remotely and unconsciously, with the ancestral-puritan idea
of the elect; hence the ceremoniousness and suggestions of ritual
in the social display of a novel like
The Golden Bowl.
So with
the ancestral ideas of sin and grace. Is it not possible to claim that
the famous Jamesian refinement is a trait in which the vision of
an ideal state is preserved-the state of grace to be achieved
here and now through mundane and esthetic means? It is the
vision by which Milly Theale is transported as she rests in her
Venetian garden-the vision of "never going down, of remaining
aloft in the divine dustless air, where she could but hear the
plash of water against the stone." And through the same process,
as I have already had occasion to remark, the fear of sin is
translated in J a.mes into a revulsion, an exasperated feeling, almost
morbid in its sensitiveness, against any conceivable crudity of
scene or crudity of conduct.*
Yet whatever the sources and implications of the social legend
in James, I have no doubt that it enabled him as nothing else
could to formulate his creative method and to remain true, even
on his lower levels, to the essential mood and sympathy of his
genius. There is an essay on Proust by Paul Valery in which he
speaks of the French novelist's capacity "to adapt the potentialiti
of his inner life" to the aim of expressing "one group of people
... which calls itself Society," thus converting the picture of
avowedly superficial existence into a profound work. But I ha
always felt that what Valery is saying in this essay could mo
appropriately be said about the later James than about Proust.
The group which calls itself Society is composed of symbolic
figures. Each of its members represents some abstraction. It
is necessary that all the powers of this world should somewhere
meet together; that
money
should converse with
beauty,
and
politics
become familiar with
elegance;
that
letters
and
birth
grow friendly and serve each other tea.... Just as a banknote
is only a slip of paper, so the member of society is a sort of
fiduciary money made of living flesh. This combination is ex–
tremely favorable to the designs of a subtle novelist.
. . . very great art, which is the art of simplified figures and
the most pure types; in other words, of essences which permit
•Cf.
Attitudes to Henry lames,
The New Republic, February 15, 1943.
